The Last Bank Robbery
by Sophia Hawkins
Summary: Batman and Robin leave Gotham City to trail a gang of bank robbers but are in for a surprise when they enter what they believe to be the criminals' hideout.
1. Chapter 1

Batman and Robin: The Last Bank Robbery

Author's note: I have decided to make this story a bit more like the original comics in that there is no Batmobile and the car Batman and Robin drive is the same one they use as Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson. However while this idea from the 30s is used here, there is no definite timeline to this story but it is set after the 60's. I like everybody else on this site have a disclaimer in that I don't own any rights to the comics or the characters. That said, read on and I hope you enjoy.

Crime was at an all time high everywhere you turned. Robberies, assault and battery, vandalism, larceny, domestic violence, explosions, even murder. The crime stories held the headlines for days at a time with little room in between for anything more. The population of underworld kingpins and small time hoods were leaving the police practically paralyzed in being able to put more criminals behind bars than there were those free as birds, walking the streets and running the nights. Gotham City was no exception and was in fact the rule of how this manner of order, or rather lack of, was carried out.

The saving grace of this crime-filled city was the heroic efforts of Batman and Robin who assisted in catching the criminals and seeing them behind bars. They went after criminals of all sorts, thieves, counterfeiters, smugglers, vandals, everything from the petty thieves to the big time underworld evil geniuses. Unfortunately their efforts were becoming very limited as they to a point only worked in Gotham City and its criminals were crossing the city lines.

The latest example of this being the work of a gang as led by mastermind criminal Harley Masterson, who acted like it was still the Roaring 20s. So much so that the entire gang dressed in the old gangster suits and toted Tommy guns, the full automatic sort with drum magazines, the sort that had been outlawed since after World War II.

Earlier in the night, the gang had held up a bank in Gotham City and made off with a cool half million, they made their getaway in a 1928 roadster and had already crossed city lines by the time the police arrived at the bank. Batman and Robin tailed the getaway car's tracks with their own car and quickly found themselves out of Gotham City. Where they were after that, they didn't know because they saw no signs up, but they found out soon enough they were long gone from Gotham.

This was a small town they had wandered into, more suburban homes, the town's tallest high rises couldn't compare to the smallest working buildings in Gotham City, and even a few dirt roads remained that hasn't yet been paved over with asphalt. Batman and Robin found themselves on one such dirt road tailing the tracks.

"Sky looks bad tonight," Robin noted, "Storm must be coming. Masterson must've counted on the rain coming first and washing out the road, as well as their tracks, before we got here."

"Masterson's going to have to give us more credit than that," Batman said.

Out of nowhere the tracks came to a stop and they too stopped to get out and see what had happened. The roadster was nowhere to be seen, however, Batman and Robin were also aware that the gang might've swapped it for one of the newer makes and models that rested along either side of the road, though that still left the question of where the roadster was.

"It doesn't make any sense," Robin said, "How could it be here and then just disappear?"

Batman looked ahead and whispered, "Get down!"

Both crouched down in the street and Robin saw what Batman saw. On the south side above the street was a line of houses, and there was a light coming around the corner of the house where the tracks stopped at down in the street. They saw one of Masterson's gang come around with a flashlight in hand, he went up the front porch steps, opened the screen door and then turned off the light as he opened the second door and walked inside.

"What now, Batman?" Robin asked.

"It's unlikely he's here by himself," Batman noted.

"Agreed but I don't see the others, or even their car around here anywhere," Robin said.

"We'd better cover the whole ground before going in, the others might be waiting around at the back," Batman told him.

It was agreed. Robin went around the left side of the house and Batman went around the right. They met around the back less than three minutes later and found they were alone.

"This doesn't look like a hiding place for a crime gang at all," Robin said, "It looks like the home of somebody's grandmother."

"That could just be to throw the police off track," Batman replied, "Remember Robin, these men are acting like it's the 1920s again…the 1920s, when Prohibition started and speakeasies were everywhere. To the untrained eye, houses and buildings came off as being on the level but once inside, anything went."

"Well then, let's go get him," Robin said.

"Let's head around to the front," Batman told him, "He was back here first; he may have rigged up something with the back door."

They dashed around to the front but before heading in they listened at the door to see if they could hear anything. It was quiet as the dead inside, so they assumed it was safe to make their move. Robin opened the door and stepped in first. The entire house was pitch dark, if somebody was in here right now they had a good idea they wouldn't know it. Batman closed the door behind him and reached for his bat light but before he could turn it on, they both heard something.

Both stayed where they were, not even daring to breathe loudly. They stood deathly still and waited, they heard what sounded like someone walking carefully on noisy floorboards. The sound came from a room to the right of wherever they currently were. They heard a knob turn, and a door open, and in the dark they saw a figure come out of the room. Robin sprang into action first and lunged at the figure, grabbing hold of him but unable to overpower him. The man struggled and resisted and fought with Robin, and they wound up both falling to the floor. Batman found the switch on the wall to turn on the lights and flipped it up just as they heard the person Robin fighting with scream out, "Let go of me, you're breaking my arm!"

The lights went on and both of the Caped Crusaders were shocked to find that the man Robin had been wrestling with was not a man at all, but a young woman. Robin let go of her arm and they both got up. Both Batman and Robin were stunned by this finding, Batman especially because he got a very good look at her. She was about half a foot shorter than Robin and probably around his age. It seemed obvious from her ratty clothes and her dirty face that she wasn't from a too well off family. She didn't appear to be built too strong and Batman also knew she was somebody who had absolutely no business getting caught in the middle of a crime war.

"Who are you?" Robin asked.

"Who am _I_?" she repeated, "I'm Ella Berkley, now, I know who you two are, I recognize you from the newspapers. You're Batman and you're Robin, and right now you're both about 200 miles west of Gotham City."

"We're well aware of that," Batman said.

"Then would you mind telling me what you're doing here?" she asked.

"Do you live here?" Robin asked.

"I should say not," Ella replied, "This is my grandmother's house, but she's in the hospital right now with pneumonia, and my mother's at the hospital waiting to hear about her condition. So I'm here and I check the house every night to make sure nothing's disturbed."

"When did you get here tonight?" Batman asked.

"About an hour ago, why?" Ella asked, "Do I need an alibi?"

"Not at all ma'am," Batman said.

"Don't call me ma'am, I'm young enough to be your daughter," she told him, "Now would you mind explaining to me why for a couple of law abiders, you came all the way out here to _this_ particular house to commit criminal trespassing, breaking and entering?"

"We're tailing the Masterson gang," Robin said, "They held up a bank in Gotham City tonight and left the city limits, we followed the tracks of their getaway car to the road right outside _this_ house and saw one of the members come in here not ten minutes ago."

Ella looked at both of them and said, "Ain't anybody come in here while I've been here."

"Do you always keep the lights out when you come over?" Batman asked.

"Sometimes," she replied, "Actually I was getting ready to leave when you two came in."

"You're sure nobody could've gotten in here?" Robin asked her, "He turned off his light before he came in and he was quiet about it."

"They couldn't have," she told them, "Because that front door was locked and the only way to unlock it is from inside, see?"

She pointed to the front door and Batman and Robin saw that there were two locks on the door, a chain and a bolt, and she was correct, the only way to open them would be from the inside.

"So what's it doing unlocked?" Robin asked.

"Maybe you could tell me," she said, "Because I know I didn't unlatch it tonight."

"What about the windows?" Batman asked, "Might somebody have gotten in through the windows?"

The girl shook her head. "The windows are all screened from the outside and even if they weren't, the windows haven't been opened in over 20 years. We can't even _get_ the windows open now, the wood surrounding the panes has swollen or something."

"20 years?" Batman repeated.

"My grandmother is a very cold blooded person and always keeps the heat on," Ella told them.

"What about in the summer?" Robin asked.

"Well in the summer she turns on the ceiling fans but she won't open the windows, she had air conditioning installed last year after she had a minor heat stroke. As you can probably tell, my grandmother is not a strong believer in fresh air," Ella explained.

"So the front and back doors are the only ways into the house," Robin concluded.

"Unless the man you say came in is a magician, yes," Ella said.

"How long were you in that room?" Batman asked.

"A couple minutes, believe me, if anybody had come in through that front door, I would've heard them," she insisted.

"Did you hear us?" Robin asked.

"Yes, that's why I didn't come out right away," she replied, "I thought I'd wait and see if whoever came in, would come into the storage room, but after that I didn't hear anything so figured I should come out and see what was going on."

"Did you hear anybody pull up outside?" Batman asked.

"Yes, you," Ella told him as she walked over to the front door and pulled back the curtain for a look out. "Does Bruce Wayne know you're driving his car? Grand theft of an automobile, preferably one that has an owner, last time I checked, will get you three years in state prison with a three year parole."

Batman couldn't help but smirk at her reply. "You're very smart, Miss Berkley, yes Bruce Wayne knows."

"Well I would hope so," she replied, "I'd hate to think of Gotham City's only hopes for stopping crime, rotting behind bars, pounding their heads and counting the days while the city's underbelly of warlords had 1,100 days of virtual freedom since the police are only in power to do so much. Stealing a car with every intention of returning it to its rightful owner sounds pretty petty to me but according to the authorities a theft is a theft and it's a felony in the A, B and C classes."

"Exactly what are we going to do about the Masterson gang?" Robin asked Batman.

"I don't know, I'd like to know how that guy got in here without being caught," Batman said. Then he turned to Ella and said, "Did you see anybody else stop on this road before us?"

"No, one went by earlier, but it just kept on going."

"What kind of car?" Robin asked.

"A roadster, that's the car you're looking for I presume."

"It is."

"It just went on ahead, didn't slow down but it wasn't going very fast so I guess they wouldn't have to," Ella explained.

"Then why didn't it leave any tracks after passing by this house?" Robin asked.

"Your guess is as good as mine," Ella said, "I'm sure I don't know but I also don't see why they even _would_ want to stop at this house."

"Who lived here before your grandmother?" Batman asked her.

She hesitated and they thought she wouldn't answer. She did answer but it wasn't what they were expecting to hear.

"I know what you're thinking, Batman…you think this might have been some criminal's hideout before she ever moved here. Maybe so, but not in this lifetime, this was a speakeasy during Prohibition."

"_This_ house was a speakeasy?" Robin asked.

"You sound surprised…that's how they fooled police…normal looking houses and buildings with hidden rooms…that's why I know what you're thinking, Batman, but you're thinking all wrong because when Prohibition was abolished in the early 30s, they did away with all hidden rooms in this house," she explained.

"Still they may have come here for a reason," Batman said.

"Think they put the money here?" Robin asked.

"It's possible," Batman replied, "Maybe not likely but it's not impossible either."

"What money?" Ella asked.

"From the bank robbery tonight," Robin explained.

"Well how much money did they get away with?" she asked.

"Half a million dollars."

"Half a million dollars?" Ella's jaw dropped and she seemed to be in a daze. "Half a million dollars," she repeated, "Well, they can't have put it in this house."

"How can you be so sure of that?" Batman asked.

"This is five hundred thousand dollars we're talking about," Ella said, "Five hundred thousand dollars, add that up in legal currency if you will. The government did print up bills for a hundred thousand dollars, but they're _not_ legal tender, anybody who has them in their possession instead of in a museum is breaking the law. So a bank wouldn't carry those and even if they did, not for public transactions, I seriously doubt the Masterson gang would try to steal them. Whoever heard of criminals _stealing_ illegal money? It's an absurdity of all sorts. Criminals _make_ illegal money, they don't steal money they can't use.

"So from there we have to deduce that they stole legal money…now there are still large bills in existence, five hundred dollar bills, thousand dollar bills, five and ten thousand dollar bills, but those haven't been printed up since World War II and they were discontinued at the end of the 60s. They _are_ still legal currency but it is highly unlikely that the bank would be carrying any of those either. So we must assume that the largest thing this money is in, is hundred dollar bills. That's five thousand bills, and it would be pretty hard to hide all that in a house this size without somebody noticing something."

"How old are you?" Robin asked.

He was amazed by her knowledge but doubted she could know so much and be only as old as he, if even that old.

Since she was shorter than he was, she stood on her toes to try and look him in the eye.

"I'm old enough," she firmly replied, "Now anyway, five thousand bills is a large sight to see, but if the money wasn't all in hundreds, then we'd be looking for more than that."

"Do you have any objections to a search of the house?" Batman asked.

"Objections? I should say certainly not," Ella said, "_I've_ certainly nothing to hide and my grandmother is 92 so I sincerely doubt she's got much to hide from prying eyes either."

Batman and Robin walked past her to check out the rest of the house. Batman inspected the dining room, and Robin checked out the bedroom, Ella stayed in the living room and decided to give everything a once over. On the surface it looked very much like a little old grandmother's house, there was very little furniture, a couch, an easy chair, a coffee table, a TV resting on an old entertainment center that was about to fall apart.

Ella picked up the old copper teakettle that rested on a shelf above the TV, it was an heirloom in her family for over 100 years. It was old, the house was old, the style in which these gangsters worked was old, so an idea seemed to fit together. She carefully took the lid off the pot and reached in…there was nothing…not that she expected five thousand bills to fit in there snug like a bug in a rug, but it was a thought that part of the money might've been stowed away in it.

Replacing the teapot on the shelf, she looked behind the framed pictures of the family, nothing, she opened the two cupboard doors on the bottom of the center, and found nothing still. Then she moved over to the couch, first she looked behind it, then behind the pillows on it, then under the cushions, and then under the couch, still nothing. Then she looked under the coffee table, there was nothing there either. Then she looked on the little stand next to the chair, nothing there either.

"Find anything yet, Batman?" she asked.

"No money, other than that I don't know what would be considered out of the ordinary," he replied.

Ella crossed into the dining room and helped in him looking. She called into the bedroom, "You find anything yet, Robin?"

"Nothing," he replied.

"Well that's just aces, ain't it? Somebody comes in here and does a disappearing act, now we're all tearing apart the house looking for money that probably isn't even here," Ella said. "Batman, suppose we _do_ find this missing money, what are we going to do then?"

"Report it to the police and have it returned to the bank."

"Which police? These police, or the ones back in Gotham?"

"It would probably be in our best interest to inform both," Batman said.

"That's a big mistake, Batman, the police in this town are just a mile down the road and you don't think if you gave them an hour they'd come before dawn when you called do you?"

"Do you live nearby, Miss Berkley?" Batman asked.

"Oh sure I live…" she started to point the direction but thought otherwise, "Close by."

They had all been surrounded by such a deathly silence save for their own voices that they all nearly jumped out of their skin when the phone rang.


	2. Chapter 2

"That's my mother calling from the hospital," Ella said.

With a hop, skip and a jump she was back in the living room and picked up the phone.

"Hello, Ma? How's Grandma? –That's good to know, when do the doctors say she can come home? –—Two days, really? That's swell…things are going fine here, like they always are, boring, quiet…no, nothing's going on here, nothing at all…but Ma, I won't be home tonight. I think I'm just going to be staying the night here…yes, yes I'll be fine. When are _you_ coming home, Ma? Two days? Okay, I can hold down the fort until then. Okay, I love you, Ma, goodnight, goodbye."

Ella hung up the phone and Batman and Robin were staring at her.

"Why didn't you tell her we were here?" Batman asked.

"My mother has a problem with authority figures, even oddly dressed ones," Ella replied, "If she found out you two were here, we'd never hear the end of that. So now what do we do?"

"What's in that storage room?" Batman asked.

"Just a bunch of my grandma's stuff," Ella said, "You don't think the money's in there, do you?"

"No, but I want to see if there's anything in there that might give us a clue as to what's going on," Batman replied.

"Aren't you forgetting something, Batman? I came out of that room when you came in," she told him.

"I know."

Batman walked past her and over to the storage room, Robin stepped next to her and she pawed him on the shoulder and asked him, "Has he been nipping on the cooking sherry or something?"

"No, he's onto something," Robin told her.

"I'll bet he is, but what?" Ella asked.

She took a step towards the room, Robin grabbed her shoulder to hold her back but she threw his arm back and walked into the doorway with her fists resting on her hips. "If you'd tell me what you're looking for, maybe I could help you find it sooner," she told Batman.

The room was small and consisted of a dresser, a nightstand, a foot stool, a large closet with sliding doors, a second closet smaller but longer built into the wall above the first one. There was one curtain clad window in the middle of the west wall, and another in the middle of the north side wall. Batman searched through the closets and found nothing out of the ordinary, then he started searching through everything in the dresser. Ella walked over to the north side window that faced the street, she drew back the curtain and with a gasp she exclaimed, "Look! Somebody just ran across the yard down to the street."

Robin sprang for the front door to get to the bottom of it and Batman followed, and when they left the room and headed outside, Ella laughed. Those two were starting to get too nosey for their own good. Acting quickly, she went over to the nightstand and took out a shoebox that was hidden underneath it. Lifting the lid she pulled out a very small, very clean snub nosed revolver, and an eerie grin formed on the right corner of her mouth.

She slipped the gun into her jeans pocket, then slipped out of the storage room and picked up her jacket from the coffee table to add to the concealment of the gun until further notice. Batman and Robin returned from inspecting the outside.

"There's nobody out there," Robin said.

"I guess my eyes don't see as well as they should after all," Ella said.

She reached into the pocket of her jacket and took out a small case that held a set of eyeglasses, she removed the glasses and put them on.

"Do you wear those often?" Batman asked.

"Only when I need to," she said, "They've yet to come up with a foolproof cure for what I have."

Batman felt Robin tug on his cape and they nonchalantly backed into the dining room so she wouldn't hear them.

"She didn't have her glasses on before, she could be wrong about not seeing anybody," Robin said.

"That might explain why she didn't know the door was unlocked," Batman thought, "But what about the fact that she didn't hear anybody come in?"

"I don't know, but now that we know she can't see, everything she's said up to now is highly questionable," Robin replied.

"I heard that," Ella said, "I'm not deaf, I'm just myopic."

Ella came into the dining room to stare them in the eyes, "Really Batman, do you think I'd lie about something like this?"

"We can't be sure of anything just yet," Batman replied, "Keep in mind that until a short while ago, none of us had ever met."

"I know, I'm still not sure I trust _you_," she told him, "You two come over here out to my grandmother's house conveniently while she's in the hospital, come busting in here trying to kill me, telling me you saw somebody come in here when I never heard or saw anybody. Now you have us tearing up the house looking for money that may or may not even be here and just _where_ is this crook supposed to be if you saw him come in?"

Robin inched his way closer to Ella and looked her in the eyes, which were bloodshot.

"You don't look so well," he said.

She glared at him, "I'm short and I'm young, what do you expect, Miss Universe?"

"I mean you look sick, are you feeling well?" he asked.

"Yeah yeah yeah, I'm fine, never better," Ella replied.

"Robin's right," Batman said, "I think once we can get to the bottom of this, you better go home and get some sleep."

"What sleep?" she asked, "Batman, do you know how many hours of sleep I've gotten in the last three days? Less than eight, I'm up all the nights when I wait for somebody to come home from the hospital and I hope they _do_ come back but it's not in the luck of our family. So it's going to be a good long while before I get much sleep at all, so if you don't mind, I'd rather stay here to see what you and Robin Hood over there, intend to do about this whole wild goose chase you seem to be on."

After having said that, Ella seemed to cool down and a thought came to mind, "Wait a minute…wait a minute, I just thought of something."

"What is it?" Batman asked.

"Well I don't know if this means anything…there's no other way in or out of this house without somebody knowing it, but there is a small fruit cellar below us, maybe it's been used as a hiding place."

"A fruit cellar?" Batman repeated.

"Yeah, course I guess you'd have to be pretty fruity to go down there to hide, it's a very small place and it hasn't been used in about 20 years," Ella said.

"Can you show us where it is?" Robin asked.

"I'll show you but I'm not going down there, it's a very small space with very wobbly stairs leading down and I'm very claustrophobic," she explained.

Ella took them through the kitchen and to the indoor back porch, there was a square door with a large metal ring in the floor.

"That's the way down?" Batman asked.

"It is. That hook on the wall is to loop the ring over so the door stays up," Ella said, "I don't know that the door will open because we never go down there but I guess it's worth a try."

Batman grabbed at the ring and lifted the door open and hooked the ring onto the hook in the wall.

"That doesn't look too reliable for someone to hide down there," Robin said.

"Maybe not but it's worth a look," Batman said.

"There's no lights down there," Ella said.

"That's allright," Batman reached into his utility belt and took out a bat light, "I'll show myself down. Robin, you stay up here and make sure nothing happens from this end. Miss Berkley, you go back to the front room and make sure nobody else tries to get in."

"Fine," Ella said as she turned for the kitchen.

"Batman," Robin said, "You don't really think somebody's down there do you?"

"Probably not but just to be sure we better check it out," he replied as he started down the stairs.

Meanwhile Ella had returned to the living room and her eyes widened and her heart skipped a beat when she saw something. The knob on the front door was turning, slowly, quietly…someone was trying to come in without being too obvious, but who? She reached into her pocket and removed the gun, in two steps she was at the door as it opened.

* * *

Batman came back up the cellar stairs and turned off his bat light. "There's nobody down there, and not enough room for anyone to hide down there either."

"Another dead end," Robin said.

It was then that they heard something crash from the living room and went to see what had happened.

At that exact same time, Ella was struggling with a man who was dressed in a long black coat and was wearing a torn up black hat that covered a better part of his face. His hands were in a death grip around her neck, trying to strangle her. She resisted, she struggled, she fought, all to what seemed no avail.

"Batman! Help!" she yelled.

Before the Caped Crusaders came to the rescue, the man let go of her and ran out the front door, Batman chased after him, and Robin caught Ella who fell to the floor and nearly fainted from strangulation.

With room to breathe, Ella took in the largest and the noisiest gasps of air she could manage, it sounded like she was about to die. She grabbed at her neck and felt where the man had choked her, "Robin, am I bleeding?"

"No."

She felt her neck near her pulse, "Feels like he took a chunk out of me."

Robin ran a glove clad thumb over the spot she was rubbing, "There's an indention there."

"From the ring," she gasped, "He wore a ring."

"What?" Robin asked.

Batman stumbled back into the house with his hand over his eyes, "He got away! There was…an explosion and he got away."

Ella got back up and started for the door, "An explosion, what do you mean an explosion?"

She looked outside and didn't see anything but she smelt something burning, like the night of the 4th of July.

"There was something out there that went off like a firework fountain," Batman said.

"But this is only June 6th," Robin said, "Fireworks aren't sold until the 30th."

"Maybe he made them himself," Ella replied, "Batman, are you allright?"

"Yes I'm allright, but what about you?" he asked.

"I'm up, ain't I? I'm talking, I can't breathe too well but then again I never could," she said.

Robin spotted something near the door, "Hey look! He must've dropped this."

Robin picked up a snub nose revolver, only to have it snatched away by Ella a second later.

"Give me that, that's not his, this is mine," she said.

"Yours?" Batman asked.

"Rather, my grandmother's…she keeps it around here for protection."

"That's a dangerous idea," Batman told her.

"Not really, take a look," Ella opened the chamber to reveal it was empty, "She never bought any bullets, experts agree, nine times out of ten, the sight alone of a gun is enough to stop people."

"Well what were you doing with it?" Robin asked.

"Oh well I came back in here and I saw the doorknob turning, so I went over to the door to brain that guy over the head with it, but he was too fast," Ella explained.

"Did you recognize him?" Batman asked.

"I couldn't see his face, he moved too fast and he had his hat pulled down too low," she said, "But I believe you now."

"Miss Berkley, I don't want frighten you but…"

"Oh," Ella scoffed, "After everything I've been through, nothing can scare me."

"It's just that now two men have been here…and since they both appear to have gotten away," Batman said, "If there's anything here they are after, they're bound to come back, and now that they know we're here, we might be dealing with the whole gang of them."

"How many is that?" Ella asked.

"We figure ten," Robin said.

"That's not a gang, that's a basketball team," she replied.

"This is a very serious matter," Batman told her, "And a dangerous one, and I'm not sure if it's safe for you to be here now."

"Come on, Batman, we're all adults here, or rather we're more or less adults here," Ella said, "Robin can't be any older than I am. Granted he and you know about crime fighting, but I know more about criminals because I grew up around a bunch of them. Trust me, there's no place I should be right now except right _here_."

"I don't know," Batman responded.

"Batman, my mother is at the hospital, there's nobody at my home, those guys are going to know who I am and they might come after me, but their goal seems to involve _this_ house, what alternatives do I have?" she asked.

"Allright, allright," Batman replied, "I know when I'm licked, you can stay but I think one of us should be with you at all times."

"Oh yeah," she cynically commented, "That's not going to get old."

"What time is it?" Robin asked.

Ella craned her neck around to look at the clock on the wall, "9:45…now tell me something, do you really think if the crooks know Batman and Robin are here, they're still going to come back?"

"If there's something here they're looking for, they will," Batman told her, "And with a possibility of five hundred thousand dollars at stake."

"That's not really much money for a bank to hold, is it?" Ella asked, "Especially for a big place like Gotham City. For all you know they're taking a powder to the next town to rob another bank worth twice that amount and continuing on the road to Mexico."

"It is a possibility we've yet to overlook," Batman said, "However, the police have reason to believe there's more at stake for these criminals than just the money from the bank robbery."

"There has to be," Robin said, "Otherwise why would they come here at all?"

"Don't ask me, I just look like a criminal, I'm not one," Ella replied.

"It looks like for the time being," Batman said, "We're stuck here until anything further comes up."

"But suppose it doesn't come up here?" Ella asked, "How will we know?"

"Miss Berkley," Batman said, "Before anything else we have to know if there's anything here that we should be aware about. Now is there anything else you haven't told us yet?"

"No," she replied, "I've told you everything that I know about what's going on here. If there's anything else you'd like to ask me about, maybe I'll know something more."

"No, that's allright, I don't think there's much about this that you could know about," Batman said.

"So now what?" she asked.

"Now, I suggest we resume searching the house for anything that might be out of the ordinary," Batman said.

"Like what, a dead body?" Ella asked, "This is a very small house, Batman, what could possibly be here that shouldn't be?"

Ella paced over to the door and looked out the window, then through the corner of her eye she caught sight of something. Looking down, but being careful not to be obvious about it so they wouldn't notice, she spotted something right behind the leg of the couch, it was the ring the man wore when he choked her. She had to think of a way to get it without them seeing. Looking back she saw they were watching another window to see if anything was happening, however if she moved to pick up the ring, they would see it. Then, she thought she heard something. She pulled back the curtain on the door and looked out.

"Batman," she said, "There's a car coming up this way with no lights on, it's moving slowly…it's slowing down…they've stopped next to the car you came in."

Batman and Robin went over to the door and looked out and saw another man in a long coat get out of the car and start up the walk way.

"Get back," Batman told her, "He's coming here and this could get ugly."

"I'm not shy, I've grown up in ugly experiences," Ella insisted.

All the same, she and Robin backed up, Batman stood near the door. A second later, the door was kicked in and the man barged in, brandishing a gun. Batman jumped at him and the two men struggled, Ella broke away from Robin and went over to help. The man broke loose from Batman's grip and Ella tried to grab the gun away from him. The two fought over the gun, Ella tried to point it away from hitting anyone, but in the midst of the fight, the gun went off aimed at Robin, and Batman and Ella both looked back with their hearts in their throats as the Boy Wonder collapsed to the floor.


End file.
